


Strictly Come Detecting

by grassle



Series: Martha Hudson, boss [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 11:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassle/pseuds/grassle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock needs a new John! Molly might have scored highly in the KNITWEAR category but didn't quite work out re. BECK AND CALL. Better to be scientific about this…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strictly Come Detecting

_"You can't do this again, can you?"_

The words were still ringing around him like a peal of cheap bells as he walked down the path, sighing a little and pulling his coat around him before turning right and walking away, coat now billowing.

Sherlock scowled as he reviewed the scene, the ending of his last case. Literally reviewed, via CCTV footage. He quite liked that new haircut, now. From that angle… Oh, no point being mad with Molly Hooper. It was his fault for being too slow and stupid about the whole thing. Still, not too late for a more systematic, a more scientific approach to finding a new Joh - a new assistant. He'd had them before Jo - his last one, of course - he went to the chamber of his mind palace marked REJECTED HELPMEETS and frowned at the collection of terrified, gibbering faces, mostly ex-flatmates - and would have them again.

And this way of going about it… While he blamed J - a certain ex-army doctor for abandoning him, heartlessly, in his hour of need, he also thanked him. For without his common touch, his well, _goldfishiness_ , Sherlock would never have been introduced to the crap telly serving as his model for finding a new, nay an ideal aide. That programme, wherein candidates were put to the test, given a series of arduous tasks to complete, proofs to pass, trials to conquer, made to prove their physical prowess and psychological superiority and stamina, that they were the best, the fittest to work with their hero. Oh, and that wasn't all. Their masters - could one say owners? - observed and graded them, yes, scored them in various categories! What was that TV show? Something to do with sugar…being half-baked……dancing around… Oh yes, One Man and His Dog. John had the DVD. Sherlock had the whistle.

He updated his spreadsheet, well, his bed sheet spread to the wall, much more convenient. Molly had done so well in KNITWEAR, in her retrospective scoring. Pity she'd let herself down in the - What? He scowled and crossed out the amended BECK AND CALL, restoring it to its original AVAILABILITY. When he found who'd done that… And yet, the amendment, the refinement was perhaps… Mycroft! Got the taste for fieldwork, well, fur costumes and whips and chain at least, after that little Serbian interlude, so COSPLAY not a problem. Except he was in therapy. For the fur costumes and whips and chains. Well, not so much that as the attempt to make his entire department participate in said fur costumes and whips and chains. Claimed it was a team-building exercise…

"Mummie?" Sherlock said into the phone. "How long is Mikey's course of shock therapy going to take? Yes, the latest one." His parents liked quick-fix solutions. Even if they didn't work. "What Coldstream Guards bearskin hat? No, that wasn't me. Never mind. No; nothing you can help with. Nor Father. And certainly not Grandmama, what with her being deceased and all. And no, I don't think she'll be coming back." He rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know I did, but… No! It's not a question of her trying harder." His parents thought everything was a question of willpower. "Thanks anyway." His mother preferred living in the past. She said it was cheaper; you could leave your bicycle outside shops when you popped in, and men wore hats. That may well have been true, but didn't help him.

"Here. Build your strength up, love." Mrs Hudson plonked an entire Battenburg cake at his elbow on her way to dusting. He scowled again. He only really liked the pink bits, but Mrs Hudson refused to pander to his whim for solely pink confectionary. This was a compromise.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" he enquired of the elderly lady, who snorted.

"Oh, you don't need much sleep at my age, dear. It's like eating - you sort of get less bothered about it."  
Hence the elaborate wee-small-hours baking, Sherlock reasoned.

"So many sections!" Mrs H pointed at his work.

"And so little time. Well, no time like the present." Sherlock bounded off to the next possibility…

 

And a high score in MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE! In fact, Sherlock licked the back of a gold star and stuck it on, banging it down with his fist. "Come on!" he yelled at the contender, encouraging him around the homemade obstacle course and running circuit constructed on the roof of Barts to test FITNESS. He blew his whistle and slapped his riding crop against his thigh. He'd developed quite the taste for that since Belgrade-ia. "Look, I realise you suffer from overeating, emotional eating in fact, eating your feelings at not having made consultant despite your long years here, a situation brought about not entirely by your halitosis - although I could see why you'd think that - but mainly by your wife's behavior at a succession of hospital parties and get-togethers. But if you made the effort -"

Mike Stamford, piggy eyes flashing behind piggy glasses, sweat dripping from every bright-red inch of his singlet-and-PE-shorts-stuffed body, made a herculean effort and advanced on him. Sherlock, realising too late Mike had been a rugby player, and so someone not unused to getting stuck in a scrum, didn't have time to duck. Flopping back against a ventilation hatch and clutching his scarf to his streaming nose, he reflected that just as a retrospective grading of Molly wasn't that fair, neither was any sort of pre-emptive marking. No; these scores had to be earned in situ. In the heat and dust of a case. In the cloak and dagger of mystery. In the do or die of the battlefield... Right. Upwards and onwards…to the Thames Valley mystery.

 

Well, excellent AVAILABILITY! Much better than the candidate he had such high hopes of nurturing, shaping… Sherlock thrust aside the memories of that idiotic headmistress demanding to know what he was doing breaking into her infant school, and her reaction when he explained he was merely there to take away young Archie, that engaging tousle-headed moppet, whom he wished to borrow for a while for Sussex, live bait for a bloodsucker; why, he planned to groom young Archie to -

The woman's screams still rang in his ears. His jacksey still smarted from not only her kicks, but those of the PTA Action on Paedophilia committee she'd summoned with a whistle far shriller than his. Far shriller than any had a right to be, really. Serve her right he'd swiped it as they booted him out.

 

Yes, his next nominee seemed to be fine for BECK AND CALL-ability, hating her job as she did and thus happy to invent frankly bizarre excuses and duck out at a moment's notice, this time to the Thames Valley and a local pub owner murdered in the beer garden of the Hatherly Arms, more specifically at the outdoor pool table. And as for KNITWEAR - an easy 10! She was given the same Christmas sweaters every year by the aunt who disliked her and her brother. Could it be his search was ended so soon, Sherlock wondered, as he bent to examine the corpse of the Irishman John Peter Moylett.

"And so you see, Moylett did _not_ have a fear of rats. What?" Sherlock twirled, the crowd in the kids' adventure castle drawing back to avoid being flicked by his coat and scarf. "It's obvious! Just look at the this garden and its elaborate rat traps. Built for him to scrutinise them. He liked them."

"He…did, yeah!" exclaimed Moylett's daughter, Alice.

"And you claimed you heard him yelling about rats not long before the body was discovered. So you all naturally assumed these marks are the gnawings of a rat's teeth, that he was savaged by a wild _Rattus Rattus_!"

"Could've been a _Rattus Norvegicus_ ," suggested Alice. Her boyfriend, James McCarthy, nodded.

Sherlock shook his head pityingly. "And what of the presence earlier in this very beer garden of a tall, limping, left-handed man who smokes cigars? Oh, I…don't think I mentioned that. No matter! And if I were to tell you that another Irishman, one living in London, his glory days behind him, and now eeking out an existence as a social worker, was also killed in a similar way a week ago?"

He held out his phone. It was just displaying a rather nice photo of him, now he'd lost the chunk again after running around Serbia for whatever reason it'd been, but no one said anything. They never did. Just gaped, satisfactorily. as now. "Patrick Martin Cusack."

"Oh my God!" Alice cried. "You mean -"

"Indeed. Your father, John Peter Moylett, stage name…"

"Johnnie Fingers," gasped Alice, sinking down onto one of the tiny stools near the giant noughts and crosses board.

"And in London, Patrick Martin Cusack, stage name…"

"Sorry, it's gone. I was only a kid at the time." Alice frowned. "Something to do with…charcoal?"

"Pete Briquette. Both members of the Irish punk rock group, U2!"

Alice's brow creased. "You mean the Boomtown -"

"Rats! I meant that!" Sherlock jumped up and down a little. "There was one early member of the group, a certain Cooee Ballarat, after whom the group was named, who left the group just before their first number-one single, fearing they'd never hit the big time."

"Ooooh," moaned everyone.

Sherlock pirouetted and pranced - he'd always loved dancing - as he laid bare the details of the man's life, including his spell in prison and his meeting with his new social worker…

"Which tipped him over into psychosis and sent him on a wild spree, murdering his erstwhile bandmates!"

"Bloody hell. Let's no one tell Bob Geldof," someone suggested. " _What?_ "

Sherlock ignored them, turning instead to garner plaudits from his latest candidate, who…wasn't there. Stalking off in a huff, he found her inside the pub, enjoying a lock-in with James's father, Charles. The table was ringed with empties and various ransacked packets of crisps and nuts and a plate bearing the remain of a ploughman's testified to the woman's having indulged in victuals and beverages. And food and drink.

"Oh, back on again, are we?" She stood, brushing honey-roasted peanuts from her jumper and knocking back the rest of her latest g and t. "Only I needed a little bit sit-down after that dash from the cab."

"Harriet Hamishina Watson." Sherlock pursed his lips. "SELF-DENIAL AND/OR ENDURANCE is not your forte, is it. More like your piano."

"Oh, give you a tune if you like! On that old Joanna over there!" And swaying a little, she dashed over to the instrument, knocking the top clear of awards and framed photos of a spikey-haired man in striped pyjamas, and began an excruciating version of "I Don't Like Mondays."

Good job there was no MUSICAL INSTRUMENT category, Sherlock reflected, thinking that no one alive could like Mondays if they were serenaded with that cacophony. She'd be scoring in the minus. Harriet suddenly fell asleep, her head hitting the keys with a horrible discord. Sherlock, pinched-lipped, marked her right down for TOLERANCE TO ALCAHOL. Even more of a lightweight than her brother.

 

"Never mind, love." Mrs Hudson patted his arm on her way out to her OAP kickboxing class. "Plenty more blowfish in the sea."

"Goldfish!" Sherlock muttered.

"Yes, I know, dear. Just it's getting a bit overused, isn't it."

"Already?"

"Yes." She could be strict when she wanted to be.

 

Sherlock was called out to his next case by an ex-client, and took the chance to drag said ex-client along for the ride, road-testing him in the protest. He was tough, strong, and incensed about the free garibaldis, well, "All them free biccies and cakes in general, what that toerag's givin' away." Angelo paused to do a bit of heavy breathing. _Menacing_ heavy breathing, not - "And I'm losing all my afternoon customers, innit. It ain't right, all them people in his caff what sodding popped up out of nowhere. I fort abawt goin' to smack him abawt a bit, din't I, no matter who this James Winter geezer is. Even freat'n 'im wiv a shoo'er."

Sherlock smiled approvingly and gave Angelo a bastard high score for RUTHLESS / GETTING STUCK IN / PSYCHOPATHY. He hadn't quite decided what to call that classification. Much better than that guy who worked down the chip shop. Elvis, they called him, for some reason. It had been going so well, him being quite light on his feet - not like that - and dashing hither and thither on Dartmoor, until that animal attack on them at the pound at Basketmills.

"Twat it!" Sherlock had yelled, pointing to the oncoming chavtastic pit bull terrier and indicating the bloke's sturdy-looking blue Doc Martens. "Knack it!" But Elvis had collapsed into a shaking, whimpering foetal ball, scared of violence. Ironic really, a bloke who worked in a fish shop reluctant to batter anything. No, Angelo would be a much better bet…

"Look! Here's his gaff." They were two streets away from Northumberland Street and Angelo pointed to the old twee teashop, Ye Olde Tweashoppe, with its abundance of chintz everywhere, even down to the china. Sherlock sniffed. He could smell decent coffee and tea. And pink cake. And pink biscuits. Lovely.

"And there's all my regulars!" Angelo's face flushed a dangerous red from the neck up as he clocked them all, one by one. A string quartet was playing on a raised dais, the music tinkling through the open shop door, either side of which stood a chintz-clad waiter and waitress, proffering free nibbles. And little samples on trays.

"Do come in!" enticed the girl. "First pot of tea and plate of biccies free to newcomers!"

"And all my family and staff," Angelo thundered, pointing through the lace curtain.

"And we should join them." A narrow-eyed Sherlock led the way to one of the remaining free tables, at the back near the gents'. It took Angelo a long time to reach him; he had to stop and greet or menace people he knew, of whom there were many, drawn from the local streets by the freebies.

"Right. I'm going in there." Sherlock nodded at the gents'. "Give it a few minutes, then join me." He stood. "For the case," he sighed, watching a succession of thoughts and questions cross Angelo's face slowly and painfully, like a family of hippos trying to free themselves from a mudhole.

Introduce maximum weight and/or girth requirement, Sherlock thought a few minutes later, trying to heave Angelo through the small window set high in the wall of the end cubicle.

"Oh I say!" gasped a voice in response to all the pants and groans and wheezes and protests and encouragements and swearing ringing out from the locked cubicle.

"What? What do you bloody say?" enquired Sherlock, emerging red-faced and panting from his exertions, straightening his coat and scarf, to glare at the shocked newcomer.

"Aren't you S -" The man was trying to peer around him into the cubicle.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade, yes." Sherlock whipped out a warrant card and assumed the gravelly West Country burr. "So it's my day off and I fancied a bit of cottaging somewhere nice and clean in Central London. Not a _crime_ , is it?"

"You tell me," replied the man, eyeing him. He produced his own warrant card. "Gregson. Detect -"

Sherlock legged it.

"Ere, Sherlock," Angelo asked a minute later, looking in confusion at the Italian bistro. "Why we back at mine?"

"Because no one else is." Sherlock nodded at the deserted place. The family had shut up shop and gone to relax at the tea room. "Including you. You were finally tempted in to enjoy a free pot of Rosy Lee and a plate of biccies with pink icing." He tried not to sound bitter about the last and waited for Angelo to recall they'd entered the tea shop and sneaked out. "Well, I say no one. No one except for…" He led Angelo round to the back and the tiny yard with its…trap door down to a cellar.

"Shhhh!" he counselled, particular as Angelo exclaimed, "My second-best jemmy! I'll have 'im!"

The sound of the metal crowbar being kicked along the concrete alerted the cellar's unlawful occupant to their presence and a head poked out of the hole. It belonged to a short, powerful man with a round, fresh, clean-shaven face, chubby and rather childlike.

"The newly minted James Winter," observed Sherlock.

"Morecroft!" cried Angelo.

'"Killer' Evans," added Sherlock. "Your former partner-in-crime. Well, one of them. From your counterfeiting days, this one. When you went by the name of Rodger Presbury."

"And Lysander Starr," corrected both men.

"And who now believes you still have the counterfeiting press, which he'd rather have. Oh, did you know Angelo's using it himself?" he enquired of the robber. He smiled encouragingly at Evans, who let loose a string of obscenities, whisked out a revolver from his breast - old-school-style - and fired two shots at Angelo.

"That was a lie. Sorry," called Sherlock, after the fleeing man. He looked at Angelo hopping on one leg, clutching the other, squealing and cussing, but, sod, felt no dimming of his clear, hard eyes, no shaking of his firm lips. There was no score at all registering in the CHEMISTRY category. Bugger.

"It was worth a punt," he concluded, shrugging.

Mind you, he reasoned as he stanched - not staunched; that mistake really pissed him off - Angelo's blood with his ever-useful scarf, one could sometimes have too much CHEMISTRY / UST, as the Case of the Retired Do Your Colours Man (copyright archea2) had shown...

 

"Gok Wan!" gasped Mrs Hudson, jamming Sherlock's phone into her apron pocket to remain unheard. She tended to deal with phone calls now. And right now she danced on the spot in excitement.

"A little early for me to eat." Sherlock frowned. "I'm not due my next meal until…Thursday, I believe. And I usually have -"

\- his phone clamped to his ear so he could take a case from one of his landlady's heroes, seemingly. The man, who they both agreed did his best but wasn't a patch on Connie or, latterly, Kenny Prince, hired Sherlock to find his missing butler whom he believed to have been lured away by a rival makeover artist. Having been bullied into this by Mrs H, Sherlock wasn't really giving it any welly, and so got the rival's address and wandered along there at dusk to snoop around the Hampstead house. It looked a little familiar, he thought?

" _Mioowwww!_ " He tripped over what he thought was some mutant rat, but which turned out to be a hairless moggy. Much less interesting. That looked familiar too. He'd just worked out this was the Prince house, and that Kenny was the rival, now retired, Do Your Colours Man when he caught the pale beam of a torch in the hallway. He flattened himself to the wall and inched forward, not making a sound, not even when the hairless monstrosity hitched a lift with him, clinging on to his back. Huh, de-furred, it wasn't de-clawed. It didn't need the cat stilling and then hissing to alert Sherlock to the presence of another person, as stealthy as himself, in the house!

The circle of light was raised - not that high - and turned inwards, held under the chin of…a pale face with mad eyes!

"No! Not you!" Sherlock cried, but the small, slim dark-haired figured scarpered back down the hall, across the kitchen and through the cat flap. As Sherlock raced after him, picking the backdoor lock to get free, he spotted the ladder up to the roof. Eschewing that, he shinned up the drainpipe and raced across the roof, leaping the gap to the next-door roof until he was within arms-length of his nemesis, his evil genius, the dark shadow to his light, the Bacall to his Bogart, the Trigger to his -

Sherlock grabbed the flapping coat and halted the man's escape. The figure span around and the two stared, seeing all that had been won and lost and said and unsaid and -

"You _died_!" Sherlock's voice was shakey.

Moriarty shrugged. "I came back, yeah?" He stood in the serious moonlight, his hair messy, his chest heaving. He ran a finger over his lips. "It's just a question of willpower."

 _Mummie was right?_ Sherlock stared wide-eyed at the open lips, the half-lidded eyes, the flushed face. "Wait… Did you just feel the world tilt on its axis?"

"I…think so, yeah." Moriarty was staring at Sherlock's parted lips.

"No, I… _Oh_ …" And Sherlock's mouth was still open in that questing heart shape when Moriarty leaned in, and Sherlock did too and they met, lips first, sinking to the floor. Well, the roof. They remained sitting, hands clasped, once their kiss broke apart.

"You're working for Kenny Prince," Sherlock said eventually.

"I am, yeah. Well, I owed him one, you know? His latest houseboy, a Filipino this time, has gone missing. But not lured away by a rival. Just eloped."

"With Gok Wan's -" Sherlock broke in

"Butler, yeah," Moriarty finished.

"Whom he met at the theatre," added Sherlock quickly.

"Seeing what play?" asked Moriarty, licking his lips. Sherlock lunged for him and snogged him again, even more soundly this time, rather than admit he didn't know.

 

After, a confused Sherlock found himself back in 221b and needing clarification about matters which were puzzling him. He reached for his phone with trembling fingers…

"Mummie? You know your…theories, like about death and things? What was that one about curly hair?" he queried, patting the twisted and diffused volume tentatively. It wasn't looking so bouffant lately. Nor in Series Two. Her theory had been something to with champagne, he'd thought. Or eggs. If only she could focus…

"No, I'm not so interested in why I never needed fillings. I don't think." He ran his tongue around his teeth. "Oh, go on then." His eyes shot open wide as he listened. "All of them? And how did you make a rat do that? Oh." He paused. "But Mikey's got fillings. And root canals."

He held the phone away a little as Mummie lamented that she'd allowed Father's crackpot theory free rein with their first born, only to live to regret it.. "Oh. Yes, well doesn't sound as effective. And difficult to make a hole through them and string them together, I'd have thought, with milk teeth being so small," Sherlock commented. "But he still wears the anklet. Despite it not working…yes, willpower. I see. But back to curly hair, if you… A kite? On the roof? During thunderstorms? Isn't that…"

"Oh, Sherlock! In here moping like this…" Mrs H, in the living room to replace a German language novel she'd borrowed, _Cleo: Die Dame Mit Der Peitsche_ , lamented to find him alone on the sofa. "You come on out to chess boxing with me. Everyone in SW1's doing it. Come on, now, while it's still light."

 

And CONDUCTOR OF LIGHT was the next category to get a workout, the very next day. He called the test that because of something he'd said to J - some blond shortarse or other: "It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it." And he now tippexed out the one-word defacement, SYCHOPHANCY, which had been scribbled above his writing, and was all set to interview a new client in the case of the Egregious Interpretation, with Mr Chatterjee making notes…

"No! Tell me not one jot about you!" Sherlock commanded the man who'd come to 221b to beg his aid. "I believe you to be an ex-soldier - surprisingly a lot of them about, considering what century we're in - recently discharged from service in…India. In mourning for your wife who died in childbirth. Too, too sad."

"India?" the potential client repeated. "Well, I was in the _Star_ of India last night. Had a nice lamb madras, as it happens."

"Oh, you know the Koh-I-Noor does a much better madras," observed Mr Chatterjee.

"I've heard that, yeah! Never been there myself," the client replied.

"That is my cousin's place. I can -"

"Ahem." Sherlock was a little miffed. "If we could…"

"And why do you think this young man is a soldier?" queried Mr C.

Sherlock preened. "That bearing, expression of authority…"

"Security guard," the man whispered. "Westfield Shopping Centre."

"The sunbaked skin coupled with the lingering cumin and saffron scents made you think India, I suppose," Mr C continued.

"Club 18-40 holiday," the client muttered.

"I see where you go wrong, young Sherlock." Mr C stood and went into lecture mode.

"I deduce!" cried Sherlock, batting aside the notepad and pen passed over to him for notetaking. "I observe everything and from -"

"No, no, my overhasty friend. What you are doing is using abductive reasoning, or _abduction_. You are inferring the precondition from the consequence, searching for a to explain b. Deductive reasoning, or _deduction_ , works in the opposite direction completely, deriving the consequences of the assumed, i.e. it is a situation in which b is a formal, logical consequence of a."

Where had that blackboard come from? Sherlock leapt up and erased Mr C's neat chalk marks and symbols.

"Mourning…black clothes," Sherlock blustered, pointing.

"My fledgling comrade, a cursory glance at this man shows him to be a Goth! Look at his boots," advised Mr C.

"He's got tiny baby toys in a Babies R Us bag!" Sherlock jumped up and down a little.

"Christening pressie for me mate's kid," offered the once-possible client.

"Get out." Sherlock stood and opened the door for them, ignoring Mr C's offer to the black-clad man to come along to Speedy's during Mr C's lunch break and tell him the problem. And pick up a discount leaflet for the Koh-I-Noor. "And don't come back! Oh, and you can leave those bhajis."

What a bloody pity, he lamented as he crammed the fritters in his mouth, what with Mr Chaterjee scoring off the charts in SNACKS. Wait, that category wasn't one he'd devised! That wasn't his handwriting! Still… He slowly and sorrowfully wrote a high grade in there for Angelo and the bloke from the chip shop too, then frowned as he noted CHARMING OF CLIENTS / WITNESSES had been altered to TURNING IT ON LIKE A TAP. Mr C had seemed good at that, no doubt a legacy of his making a living serving and retaining his customers. Yes, of course, that made sense, if one considered the highest achiever there so far, Sebastian Wilkes.

Sebastian had been excellent at soothing and bullshitting people, and another consequence of his job, the stupidly high salary and bonuses, had garnered him a sky-rocket score in the READY SUPPLY OF CASH FOR CABS, MEALS AND PAYOFFS grouping. Henry Knight had done well there too but had the lowest-possible rating in BOARD GAMES. My God, that disgraceful scene when he'd got scared during KerPlunk and been too nervous to go on. He'd needed one of his white pills and half an orange one and a whole pot of Mrs Hudson's herbal tea to even unclutch his fingers from the plastic straw they'd frozen around.

"You and your board games." Lestrade shook his head indulgently as he took up another red counter.

"But I need a helpmeet who can play against me, to help sharpen my skills and hone my abilities via ludic activities!" Sherlock cried. "It's my gimmick." He hesitated, turning his yellow disk over and over.

"In that case you might wanna think about getting another, because, take that and party!" Lestrade crowed as he slammed in his next red circle. "Look, two lines of four at once." He released the lever and the counters fell free of the bottom. "Another? Wanna embarrass yourself again?"

"You win because you choose the game!" squealed Sherlock.

"You choose then." Lestrade was magnanimous in victory.

"Not Operation. Never again." That livestreaming of their last danger night, aka games evening had been a bad idea and the humiliation still a ringing one. "Buckaroo."

"Great." Lestrade grinned and cracked his knuckles. "My fave. Put money on it?"

Within ten minutes, Sherlock was a pony, never mind a donkey, down.

“Cluedo?” suggested Lestrade. 

“No, Greg.” Sherlock curled into a ball. 

“ _Greg?_ ” 

“It’s…your name, isn’t it?” Sherlock asked. 

“Yeah, course. Just thought you…couldn’t remember it.” 

“Not remember a one-word syllable. In what universe am I a moron?” Sherlock glared. 

“So, Cluedo?” 

“No. Not after last time. In front of my parents and everything.”

"Pity. I looked forward to whipping your arse." Lestrade took a manly drink of beer. Sherlock gaped open-mouthed at the rough, tough Met detective. Was that…UST? _Ish?_

"Yeah, reckoned I'd be making you scream like a little girl." And those very brown eyes, and very white teeth… Sherlock's eyes flickered as he ran the data, playing in his mind's eye past cases with this man…

Lestrade would score well in SNEAKING UP FROM BEHIND, if the Case of the Second Semen Stain, their foray into gay porn (the industry, not - Honestly. Some people) was any indication. And his work in the case of the managing partner of a multinational law firm who'd been found dead in a locked-from-the-inside conference room had shown him excellent at STICKING THE BOOT IN (Sherlock was still undecided about that nomenclature) and unafraid to take on the City of London Magic Circle Mafiosi.

And Lestrade's knowledge of SNACKS had helped Sherlock deduce - yes; deduce - that the partner had been poisoned by a rival via the poison coating the firm's business and promotional corporate chocolates placed in the glass dish on the conference table! Yes, Lestrade had been instrumental in the Case of the Licked Neapolitans all right.

And Lestrade's access to petty cash meant he always had wads of the stuff to shell out as and when needed, including for Sherlock's consultancy fees! Lestrade dished those out every Saturday, Sherlock lining up with Lestrade's unfeasibly large family of five kids to receive his money. A heavenly choir started up, well, some buskers in Baker Street, as Sherlock came to his life-changing conclusion, and wasted not one second informing Lestrade of his ascendancy, the dazzling opportunity extended to him -

"What? I can't be your assistant, Sherlock! I lead the bloody investigations!"

And sod, he did too. Right, Sherlock's course was clear. Retirement, he decided. To quit the hurly-burly, the hustle and bustle of the mean streets while he was still ahead. Head off to a remote cottage on the Sussex downs. Where he could cultivate a hobby. Something beginning with B, he rather thought, snatching up the dictionary. Banjo playing? Didn't have one. Basket weaving? Didn't know what that was. Beekeep -

"Yoo-hoo!"

"Mrs Hudson!" Sherlock shut the dictionary with a snap, earning shushes from the others. "This is a stakeout!"

"Yes, I know, love. Only you forgot your wallet and phone, you scatterbrain. I'm just on my way back from Bingo so I thought I'd drop by." She smiled at all the officers. She knew them all.

"Early for Bingo night?" commented Lestrade.

"Well, once I'd won the big prize - my fastest time ever - I decided to call it a night. Oh, I put you some more pocket money in, you'll notice, lovie," she remarked to Sherlock as she handed his wallet over. "Well, I don't know what to do with all those cash prizes I win else! And I brought some nibbles for everyone." She passed them round.

"What happened?" asked Sherlock around a mouthful of raspberry macaron (not macaroon. That mistake always irritated him), indicating Mrs H's bruised knuckles.

Mrs H shrugged. "Oh, Marie Turner got a bit lairy at the speed knitting. I had to calm her down a bit. And some people are just asking for it, aren't they. Have those faces you want to slap about a bit." She cracked her knuckles, making most of the officers jump, and as she moved, Sherlock caught the outline of a gun strapped to her thigh. A thought coalesced slowly in him, moving up from the soles of his shoes to the knot of his scarf as he stared at Mrs Hudson, with her cookery prowess, her ready supplies of cash, her penchant for violence, her sweetness to people - the violence notwithstanding - her skillful playacting, her…

"How's your bad hip?" he asked, his voice strangled.

"That? I had the op ages ago! It's titanium now. Well, most of me is, at my age."

"Bionic woman of Baker Street," Lestrade threw in thickly from behind a pistachio macaron. He loved green confectionary, as Mrs Hudson knew.

"Ooooh, this what you're working on? You're staking out Abbey Grange, thinking the burglars / robbers, disturbed in the act, dumped their swag in the grounds somewhere and are coming back to retrieve it?"

Mrs H peered out of the hastily erected and slightly anachronistic nightwatchman hut they were all crammed into. "Because what I thought Sherlock would think is that with that gang's description being in all the papers, anyone could make up a story about burglars breaking into the house and use the descriptions."

"Meaning…" asked Lestrade.

"Well, three big strapping men could've overpowered Sir Eustace, couldn't they, Sherlock? Slapped him silly. No need to kill him, was there? And most murders are committed by the spouse. Sherlock wrote a blog post on it. I think it would seem to Sherlock that -"

"Lady Brackenstall did it herself, offing her detested husband in this way and burgling herself so as not to have to hand her beloved jewellery over with the estate to the new Lady Brackenstall when she herself becomes the dowager!" Sherlock yelled.

"That's it, dear!" said Mrs Hudson against the backdrop of _oohs_ and _ahhs_ from the Met's finest.

"MRS HUDSON PLEASE BE MY ASSISTANT!" Sherlock cried.

"Ooooh, lamb! Assistant! That the best you can do? You'll have to top Jim's offer. He's asked me to go in with him as equal partner in his new enterprise, you see."

"What?" gasped most of the assembled.

"Only I don't think I will, to be honest." The elderly lady sat. "Seeing as Wanda and Timmie - your parents, Sherlock - and I were talking about getting something together ourselves, you see. Well, think of the demographic! The entire silver generation would be our audience for our crime-solving adventures. Everyone's catering for Oldsters nowadays. Engaging the Aging, they call it."

"Feeding the Silver Foxes," Lestrade said on a fake cough.

"Yes, aiming at the third-agers is the way to go. Senior power!" She giggled. "And we'd be taking a built-in fanbase with us. Yes, we could just see ourselves in a detective show for the Grey-OK generation."

"I see," Sherlock replied weakly. Not weekly, but never again two-yearly. More like annually, once criticism, and more importantly dwindling viewing figures, led to shorter gaps between episodes.

"You could be our consultant?" Mrs H offered, and Sherlock gaped like a, well not a goldfish. Didn't do to bandwagon jump. Or shark jump.

"Sherlock! That's gotta be better than being in an out-of-nowhere, just-add-water bromantic threesome, one you jump into despite only knowing the female half of for what, a few months?" Lestrade exploded.

Mrs Hudson, that OAP temptress, took out a packet of shop-bought pink wafers. She slid a knife free of her sleeve and slit the top of the packet open.

"Yeah. Go on then," said Sherlock. They shook hands on it, just as a singsong Irish voice came from the entrance: "Oh. Mrs Hudson. Am I…too late?"

Sherlock didn't need the nudge from Mrs H nor more fake coughing from Lestrade to propel himself into action. He turned towards Moriarty, watching him follow the movement of Sherlock's tongue licking away lurid pink crumbs from his lips and hearing him gasp in reaction.

"That depends," he said in his lowest, deepest, baritonest voice, "On what for." They stared at each other for a while.

 

"That's…not really a cliffhanger to end on." Lestrade looked pained.

"They're doing their best," Mrs Hudson reasoned, handing out napkins.


End file.
